Why most scientists aren’t solving the world’s biggest problems, and what they should do instead скачать в хорошем качестве

Why most scientists aren’t solving the world’s biggest problems, and what they should do instead

Most scientists do “safe” research to secure their next grant. But what if more of them worked on the most important problems instead? In this episode, we talk with Anastasia Gamick, co-founder of Convergent Research, about how to raise our level of ambition for what science can actually achieve. Convergence Research incubates what they call "focused research organizations": small, startup-style teams that build critical “public good” tech, which both academia and for-profits ignore. We discuss: What makes a research project truly high-impact in view of an AI world Concrete examples of these projects: maps of brain synapses, software that’s provably safe, drug screening, good data for AI-powered scientific research, and more How to prioritize defensive technology, such as biosafety tools, instead of just pushing every frontier as fast as possible How young scientists can find the work that matters most for the future 00:00 Cold open 00:56 Introducing Anastasia Gamick and the mission of Convergent Research 01:48 Defining Focused Research Organizations (FROs) and their unique characteristics 08:50 Backcasting from 2075: what research to prioritize now to prepare for the intelligence age 18:12 The four types of projects Convergent decides not to fund 24:39 Biological and ecological dark matter: why we need better datasets for AI science 27:32 Why academia and industry aren’t incentivized to build tech capabilities for the public good 28:36 Defining “moonshot projects”: how boring drug screening creates massive downstream impact 32:00 The future of neuroscience: capturing videos of synapses firing 34:50 How the FRO model is catching on internationally 35:29 Steering vs. accelerating: selecting defense-dominant technology 40:26 Increasing human agency and how scientists can choose high-impact research areas 45:55 The evolution of scientific funding and the role of new philanthropy 47:09 Finding existential hope in the community of future-builders Full transcript and resources are available at www.existentialhope.com/podcasts/anastasia-gamick